It mostly means a dedication to deregulation and free markets. More specifically, private-public partnerships. That is the difference between them and Libertarians or Anarcho-Capitalists, since Neoliberals see that the government needs to provide things like courts, military, police, etc. but want to insert private companies to provide government services (e.g. in WW2, soldiers cleaned and laundered the military’s uniforms internally, now a private company will do the laundry for a military base at a 50% markup).
As all political ideology, in its original formulation, Neoliberalism was a deviation from liberalism, in the Vienna Circle, by its rejection of “political liberalism”. It didn’t believe in formal freedom, democracy, equality, etc. Real freedom is the freedom to buy and sell on an unregulated market, real democracy is the ability to vote with your wallet, and real equality is the lack of regulations protecting one group from another. This is why neoliberals of the 1920s and 30s were pro-fascist, since the fascists were so dedicated to privatization and repressing socialists and communists. Thus preserving the freedom of the market, even if later neoliberals want to walk that back.
It mostly means a dedication to deregulation and free markets. More specifically, private-public partnerships. That is the difference between them and Libertarians or Anarcho-Capitalists, since Neoliberals see that the government needs to provide things like courts, military, police, etc. but want to insert private companies to provide government services (e.g. in WW2, soldiers cleaned and laundered the military’s uniforms internally, now a private company will do the laundry for a military base at a 50% markup).
As all political ideology, in its original formulation, Neoliberalism was a deviation from liberalism, in the Vienna Circle, by its rejection of “political liberalism”. It didn’t believe in formal freedom, democracy, equality, etc. Real freedom is the freedom to buy and sell on an unregulated market, real democracy is the ability to vote with your wallet, and real equality is the lack of regulations protecting one group from another. This is why neoliberals of the 1920s and 30s were pro-fascist, since the fascists were so dedicated to privatization and repressing socialists and communists. Thus preserving the freedom of the market, even if later neoliberals want to walk that back.